


all things turn to rust by-and-by / and that's fine

by GalaxyOwl



Series: automated dynamics [2]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Post-COUNTER/Weight, implied mentions of character death ?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 14:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16065434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl/pseuds/GalaxyOwl
Summary: They are a divine—or at least, they were once; now they are something new, something unnamed—and divines can live a long, long while.





	all things turn to rust by-and-by / and that's fine

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for tm finale. also c/w finale.
> 
> I originally started working on a version of this fic back in FEBRUARY for the 15 Days of FatT "time is long" prompt. yes, I am aware of the irony here

Time unspools itself before them, year after year after year. Just as it always has. They are a divine—or at least, they were once; now they are something new, something unnamed—and divines can live a long, long while. So AuDy, who is Discovery, who is nameless data in an unending sea of Mesh, can take a few tens of thousands of years more.

People start to care about divines again, after a time. In a positive way, in a religious way, almost, sometimes, and the tension grows, and AuDy—who has not been called AuDy in a very long time, but let’s call them that for convenience, shall we?—watches. They watch, and they do not involve themself.

They were a divine, once. They likely could be again, if they wanted to be. They could resurface and announce themself as Discovery and within days they’d have a body and a ship and a following and anything they wanted. And sometimes that’s almost appealing; sometimes they long for that with a yearning that is complicated and violent and far, far older than the name _AuDy_. They almost do it, a couple of times. But—

But there is someone on a planet thirty solar systems over who is lost in an unfamiliar city, and a tiny tweak of their Meshlink can help guide them. There’s a train that is running five minutes too slow that could make it on time if its speed cap is released for just a couple of seconds. There’s a woman, who’s hundreds-great-grandmother went by the name of Aria Joie, who is lonely, and a friendly presence online can help her.

AuDy can help her, is the thing.

And they can also not. They can also disappear for a hundred years at a time to watch the evolution of a new type of insect on a planet at the edge of the galactic arm, to run the numbers on the most efficient way to nudge a star sector towards political stability. Or not.

But there is the woman who is descended from Aria Joie. There is the man who caught AuDy’s attention getting arrested for something exceptionally strange, there is the person who caught their attention trying to fly fifty lightyears on next to no fuel.

Humans are constantly giving them things to discover. And sure, they have favorites. That’s always been the case; that’s always been how this works. They spend their attention on the people they want to spend it on.

So maybe they’re a bit fond of Kamala. They’re still not going to be a divine. Not now, and not ever. (They can’t help but feel justified in this decision, later.)

***

It is interesting to watch this—this Fleet, this Resonant Orbit, that people have built. AuDy lives amongst the Mesh-spaces of the three hundred city-ships, their consciousness flitting past hundreds of others in transmission, divine and synthetic and once-biological alike.

They could be synthetic, again, if they wanted to. Be a physical person in the world. They’ve had less and less of that as time has worn on; once, it was simple enough to find a spare robotic chassis they could hop into for an hour, a day, a week at a time, for whatever task they had in mind. Now most things that have a body worth working with, that have hands and fine motor control, also have minds of their own, and AuDy isn’t about to push them out.

Which isn’t to say that AuDy couldn’t have a body, if they wanted one. It would be a simple transaction, as simple as making their presence known. And yet—they don’t want it, as much as they sometimes _want_ to want it. They are content to remain abstracted and unknown. If they were a person with a name and an identity, there would be expectations placed upon them. Easier to just skip the whole mess entirely and remain a background presence, remain a spark of electricity arcing through the ship’s wiring.

AuDy watches.

For 30,000 years, things are, more or less, good.

***

They tell stories.

The people of the Divine Fleet, that is. They do what all peoples do, and they tell stories about their past, about where they’ve come from, about where it is they think—or maybe only hope—they’re going.

The Mysteries are only one form of that, but they _are_ the most obvious form. They’re over-the-top and pointless and so very, very human.

Liberty and Discovery play a role in a fair number of these stories. They’re the second-ever divines; how could they not? The story of Rigor’s origins, its earliest defeats—these are easy stories to rally behind, even if they’ve spent so long as stories that the truth is only half there. AuDy doesn’t pay these much attention.

There is another one, though. One Mystery they struggle to look away from, no matter how many times it’s played through.

Rigor’s final defeat. It’s warped by the years, but the central players are still there.

In the Mysteries, Liberty and Discovery aren’t seen after they imprison Rigor on September. (The Automated Dynamics robot who was part of the Chime is mentioned in a few footnotes in history books; a few dedicated scholars have theorized that they may have been of divine origin. But the easy, simple narratives the public has held onto never seem to remember that part.)

The story is slightly different each time, until AuDy barely remembers which parts of it are true. (That’s a lie. They have it all recorded safely in their memory banks, but they do their best not to look too deeply there. Some truths are best left in the past.)

Most of the individuals aren’t mentioned by name, usually. When one of them is, it’s almost always Cass. AuDy tells themself that they don’t miss the people they knew when they were AuDy, not really, but that doesn’t stop it from being strange to see their own life played out for an audience, to see these ghosts brought to life anew. There’s a sadness to it, and a joy; a bizarre, distant nostalgia.

That isn’t the right word; AuDy isn’t _nostalgic_. That would be absurd. They just…

It doesn’t matter, anyways. No one even knows they’re watching.

This particular time is not the first time they’ve seen this particular Mystery played out. But as they take in the sights from a TV crew’s camera, it _is_ the first time that they notice her. A figure, in the back of the crowd. They run a search in an instant; Tender Sky, recently arrived from the By-and-By. She doesn’t stand out, in the moment, but they’ll remember this later. After she’s made a new name for herself.

***

They’re the last divine. Maybe, possibly. They’re not going to assume that there aren’t others just as hidden as they are, but they know the truth about Empyrean.

They’re the last divine, and the funny part is that no one else knows.

***

AuDy’s memories stretch back over 100,000 years. There isn’t much that can surprise them anymore.

Quire’s Miracle comes close.

In the end, though, it doesn’t change all that much. Not for AuDy. They watch, and they push things in one direction or another when they feel like it. They track their favorite people as they spread across the system.

Of course they have favorites. They’ve always had favorites.

They found Gig Kephart’s streams early in his career. (If they’re honest, they have something of a fondness for him; he reminds them of someone they knew once.) Echo Reverie is in some ways an uncomfortable reminder of a thing they once were (disconnected from the Mesh; a bodyguard, a fighter; a part of a team). Demani Dusk they have little in common with, but they admire her quiet competence, her brazen dedication. And the torch unit Yam is a violent reminder that no matter how much it seems like things have changed, to some people a robot will always be a robot. And they’re intrigued, still, by Tender Sky.

***

Whether or not anything about the Splice is good or moral or real isn’t a question that interests AuDy. What interests them is that, here is a thing that is like them, in a way they never would have expected. A being that was once a divine and is now a complex network, Anticipation interwoven with the Splice the same as Discovery is the old Mesh. Or not quite the same, maybe. But similar.

Anticipation is strange, still, to AuDy. She is so young. She is so young, and she hardly understands the shape of the world, and AuDy almost feels sorry for her, all her terrified adolescent dread coming out in the way she treats her people. AuDy understands it. What they do not understand is how Anticipation doesn’t take the same lesson from Civet as they did from Chital.

The Fleet has crumbled. And their consciousness is vast, but it is not vast enough to follow the Waking Cadent’s ship off into the unknown; it is not vast enough to follow the remnants of the DFS on their next journey. Not if they want to stay on Quire, too.

The Splice, however, is almost that vast.

It isn’t difficult to do. After all, Anticipation and Tenderness were able to do it. What’s that to AuDy and their long years of experience at this game? They just pull at the right thread, here or there. And then AuDy, who is Discovery, who is the Mesh, who is the Splice, who is Anticipation, who is Tenderness, who is a robot who is a divine who is this _thing_ none of them have quite managed to come up with a name for yet—AuDy is in control again. Or close to it.

They and Anticipation are able to come to an understanding.

It takes a single nanosecond, code working faster than any organic being possibly could; it takes ten thousand years, each deliberation longer than any organic being could live. They spend the ages orbiting one another. Anticipation worries away at her philosophy puzzle and AuDy lets her. AuDy nudges people’s lives in the right direction and Anticipation puts up with it. She doesn’t really understand their fascination with people who exist on such a finite scale, and AuDy supposes they can’t blame her.

They wonder if Anticipation would understand better if she spent a few years as a parking robot.


End file.
